


verb in perfect view

by derryfacts2 (winchysteria)



Series: Derry University [4]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Professors, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Bottom Mike Hanlon, Boyfriends, First Time, Hand Jobs, Kissing, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Top Bill Denbrough, i know that tag seems gratuitous but its SO MUCH kissing, like with each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25301986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchysteria/pseuds/derryfacts2
Summary: BILL: Maybe I should come over to protect u.BOYFRIEND MIKE: Maybe you should.BILL: Maybe I will.BOYFRIEND MIKE: This is a thinly veiled excuse to spend the night, right?BILL: Yes please--an pwp, which is two chapters somehow, for mike and bill's first time in the @DerryUniversity twitter au.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon
Series: Derry University [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758043
Comments: 8
Kudos: 106





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> takes place between updates 203 and 204 of the fic. you don't need to know what's going on besides that they are in a new relationship but were taking things sort of slow physically because bill hadn't ever been with a dude. 
> 
> follow me on twitter [@derryfacts2](https://twitter.com/derryfacts2/)  
> follow the au [@derryuniversity](https://twitter.com/derryuniversity/)

The last time Bill stood on this porch, he’d at least had a wine bottle to fidget with. Mike had given him a brief tour, and Bill had been relieved at how freshly neat it was, at how Mike was nervous too. They’d eaten a butternut risotto that was both delicious and blatantly romantic. They drank the chardonnay and watched something, some adventure movie, until Bill worked up the courage to start groping Mike through his sweater. He left at ten-thirty with swollen lips and an erection that Mike politely ignored.

This time, all he can do is shove his hands in his coat pockets, hunch against the cold, and listen for footsteps on the other side of the door.

So he’s anxious. So what. His fantasies about what he would do to Mike in bed—not really Mike’s bed, or Bill’s own for that matter, but some kind of vague sunlit California King with an amount of down pillows that could only be a cry for help—are many and varied, and they become more and more familiar with every shower he takes and night he sleeps alone. But they skip the awkward parts. For instance, the moment on Halloween when he’d been so enthralled by how it felt to dry-hump Mike’s thigh that he didn’t realize he was impaling his boyfriend on a towel rack. Or right now. The little lull between asking to come over to have sex and actually having it.

_ How do people stand, _ he wonders suddenly.  _ How many breaths is one supposed to take per minute? Was bringing my toothbrush dorky? Has everyone I’ve ever slept with lied to me and there’s something really weird about my dick?  _ It had seemed like such a good idea half an hour ago.

Then, blessedly, there are the footsteps. The door comes alive. Mike’s smile takes up the entire gap when he opens it.

This part, Bill knows how to do. Like reaching out to catch a baseball. Mike’s arms round pleasantly on his shoulders; his lips are warm and taste sweetly clean, like toothpaste. He hums in amusement when Bill snakes his arms into his cardigan and around his waist. It’s needy in a way that reliably makes Mike use tongue, and so he does, the hot flat of it pressing past Bill’s lips and under his front teeth. Kissing Mike, always, is good enough to be the main event. Bill contentedly reduces his brain function to noticing how solid and warm their chests feel against each other, how he stretches his throat to reach up, how Mike cups the back of his head to help. There’s something hard and cool against Bill’s back, and he realizes that at some point Mike must have ushered him inside and closed the door behind him.

“Hello to you, too,” Mike says through a short-of-breath laugh when he pulls back. Not far, though.

Bill pants up at him, letting his head fall back to the door, then gives an apologetic half-smile, half-shrug and steals one more kiss, brief and emphatic. “Hi.”

“I feel safer already,” Mike says.

“You’re welcome,” Bill says, loosening his grip so that Mike can escape, if he wants to. He does, but his fingers trail down Bill’s left arm to grab him gently by the hand and pull him further into the house. Bill follows, pleased at the way Mike’s thumb curves over his knuckles.

Mike only lets go to start rooting through his kitchen cabinets. “I don’t know if you want a glass of wine or something, I have an open red around here somewhere, but I was just making tea,” he says, and Bill realizes with a wave of affection that Mike is wearing flannel pajama pants.

“Sure, I like tea,” he says. “F-fucking cold out.”

He likes tea enough. Mostly he likes watching Mike move around and perform the little ritual, humming his agreement, telling some story about Ben and his Texan blood and his inability to cope with the cold. More than anything, he likes the little gentle touches Mike uses to move him around to get to things he needs. Sure, he could sit down at one of the kitchen stools, get out of the way, but then he wouldn’t get to ride the rollercoaster of his pulse when Mike puts a hand on his waist to reach into a cupboard over his head. Bill can smell his deodorant.

“—so I don’t mind it, but I guess that might be a local thing,” Mike is saying. “It just feels right.”

“Yeah, me either,” Bill agrees, not entirely sure what happened in the middle, but happy to claim this thing that they have in common.

“Of course you don’t,” Mike says. “You look so fucking handsome when it’s cold out, anyway. Pink cheeks and all.”

Bill touches his nose and cheeks, which are in fact a little cold, and realizes that his cheeks hurt because he’s grinning like an idiot.

Mike turns away from the sink to look when Bill doesn’t reply. “What? What’s that look about?”

“How do you just say things like that?” he asks, because that’s marginally less embarrassing than saying _ I am so into you that it makes me forget most of the words that I know. _

“Like what?” Mike replies, but he throws a grin over his shoulder. “No, I don’t know. I’m even worse at not saying them. Happy, sad, angry, if I want something—or somebody—if I like them, if I care about them, I’m not—I can’t play it cool. Never could. So I just don’t.”

Though he knows it’s not really directed at him, the  _ want _ and  _ like _ and  _ care _ kick up dust in Bill’s stomach. “Lucky for me, then,” he says, feeling somewhat like Shelley tugging at the end of her leash. “I never would have had the g-guts to talk to you if you played hard to get.”

Being around Mike performs some kind of alchemy on his anxiety—his heart, rather than hammering at the front of his ribcage like it’s dying to skip town, is doing something vertical, encroaching on his throat occasionally. Something that feels pleasant rather than terrifying. He wants. Outside, alone with the idea of having sex with a new person, it’s nerve-wracking, but as soon as Mike is around the frantic energy just makes little grabby hands in his direction. Like he is a magnet suddenly in the same room as a fridge.

They’re both surprised, then, when Mike hands over the mug of tea with both hands and Bill jumps like he’s been shocked, spilling it over both of their fingers. “Sh-shit, sorry,” he says, and Mike laughs gently, just a rumble in his chest.

“You okay?” he asks, setting the mug on the counter and going for paper towels.

“Just a little w-wound up,” Bill says. 

“Good way? Bad way?” Mike replies, mildly, returning with a handful of paper towels that he uses to gently dry Bill’s hand; his fingertips drag along the inside of Bill’s wrist and make him shiver.

“Good,” Bill says. “Very. It just feels—um. I don’t know.”

Mike looks down at him with those dark persuasive eyes, and Bill feels glued to the floor. He still hasn’t let go of Bill’s wrist. “Like what?”

“It’s,” Bill says, makes a noise of frustration. “Look, man, they invented wr-writing for guys who couldn’t talk dirty.”

Mike laughs. The column of his throat is beautiful. “Good thing I already want to have sex with you, then.”

“Well,” Bill says, and on impulse, leans up to kiss him. On the jaw, first, lips against the day’s stubble, but then on the mouth, when Mike ducks his head in a wordless request. He’s like a lightning rod, stuck to the kitchen floor, whole body humming, cells stumbling over each other to get closer, as if they’ve been in line for this for years.

He pulls back, settling onto his heels.

“C’mon, author man,” Mike says, still smiling, but speaking softly. “Tell me how it feels.”

“It’s like,” Bill says, then presses the back of his fingers to his lips. “It’s like no one’s ever touched me before.”

Bill is used to freaking people out, to saying something far too intense on the third or fourth date. Though they sound overwrought, these things are true: he is not a casual person, he makes decisions about people quickly, the skin between the world and his feelings about it feels unusually thin, sometimes. Mike, so far, has been immune to his Nicholas Sparks bullshit. Sometimes even, Bill suspects, he’s a little turned on by it. So this is a guess.

It’s a good one, judging by the way Mike gathers him up like a sheaf of wheat and chases Bill’s shaky breath back into his mouth. He tastes like warm spice this time, the tea Bill hadn’t gotten to: the feeling of being pressed against him conjures romance novel covers, crashing waves, rolling cameras. There’s a degree of showmanship about it that Bill finds deeply appealing. Mike’s exhale against his lips is unsteady, and a surprised, needy noise peels off Bill’s back teeth.

“Okay,” Bill says, when Mike pulls back. He bumps their noses together gently. The blood roaring in his ears demands more! Another! Like a little Viking tyrant.

Mike looks slightly appalled at himself. “I mean, I don’t want to put any pressure on—” he starts to say, and Bill, wriggling impatiently against the broad hands spanning his back, lets himself off the leash. He cuts Mike’s next word in half with a kiss as sloppy and determined as he feels: not a  _ hello _ , or a  _ let me see— _ but a bright, blatant, hungry _ please. _

It’s been a long time since Bill’s been so desperate to get into someone’s pants that they stumble into walls on the way to the bedroom, unwilling to separate long enough to see where they’re going. The mutual decision that a bruise or two is worth sucking on each other’s tongues an extra five seconds. It’s _ fun. _ Something falls off the wall behind Bill as Mike presses against him, running teeth over his bottom lip but not biting. Bill laughs; Mike bites his earlobe in retribution; Bill grabs his ass with both hands to roll their hips together and shivers when Mike drops a pleased little huff directly into the shell of his ear.

There are hands, strong and insistent, under the hem of Bill’s t-shirt. Mike’s fingers press into the bare skin of his lower back, pushing and pulling at him like a cat might, and Bill retrieves his tongue long enough to say, “Let m—wait, jacket.”

Mike hums at him and moves down to his neck, licking hot and wet where Bill’s pulse hammers under his jaw, as if to say  _ not my problem. _ Bill untangles his arms from Mike’s shoulders, kissing the skin just under the collar of his shirt in apology, and sheds the jacket himself, feeling distinctly like a rag doll as he swings his arms behind him, cinched to Mike at the waist.

They lose Mike’s shirt and Bill’s jeans before they reach the bedroom, and Bill feels a kind of athletic fizz building in his arms and legs, like maybe he’d want to throw Mike into the air, ice-dancing style, if he physically could. It’s like they’re play-fighting, almost, Mike’s insolent little nudges and pinches taking Bill apart without any apparent effort. When Bill feels two fingers reach down and just under the edge of his underwear, teasing across where his ass meets his thigh, he bites Mike’s bottom lip and pushes him toward the bed. Mike falls backwards across his comforter like a very happy Christmas tree.

“Take your shirt off,” he says, hands cupped around his mouth like he’s heckling Bill at a baseball game. Feeling more than tempted to giggle, Bill grabs the back of his collar, pulls it over his head, and shakes his hair out.

“Happy?” he says.

Mike grins at him, pumps one fist in the air.  _ Score. _

He experiences, then, a very brief moment of panic over the fact that he is in his boxers, staring down Mike fucking Hanlon, and can’t think of what to do next. Perhaps sensing this, Mike props himself up on his elbows, the muscles of his chest shifting just so, and Bill lets himself be propelled forward by his dire need to touch them. Mike sits up to meet him when Bill clambers into his lap.

For all that Bill goes in clumsy and overeager, pawing at his torso like it’s going to disappear., Mike puts a hand on his neck almost delicately. Thumb rubbing the joint of Bill’s jaw, he kisses with a kind of steady depth that makes blood roar in Bill’s ears: first open-mouthed and careful, not trapping Bill’s top lip but pulling at it gently, and then wider, tongue sliding in and across. It makes Bill settle as much as it makes him sweat. His hands slow and his chest is on fire and his hips, he realizes, are rolling in time with Mike’s tongue, like his body is some kind of unruly orchestra begging for a tempo. And it feels—

Mike’s hard, too. It’s not as easy to tell through the pajamas, but there it is, Bill thinks, and on an instinct he didn’t expect, he rocks his hips further forward, tilting up, so he can feel the slide of Mike’s cock faintly across his ass, separating him just slightly. His ambitions for tonight aren’t quite so grand, but the way that drag feels bumps certain items higher up the wishlist—next time, maybe, or the next.

He’s fingered himself, sure: he read about prostate orgasms like anyone else, and he didn’t want to be completely woefully unprepared whenever he did get around to having someone want to fuck him. It had been fine. A little uncomfortable, a little messy. Good the way masturbation tended to be, but not as life-changing as some of the internet columns would have had him believe. But with it underneath him like that—Bill sucks on Mike’s tongue, runs a thumb over his nipple—Mike’s hard cock, something Bill had accomplished, and the heat and aliveness of it, that has some appeal.

He realizes very suddenly that he could finish like this. That he will, most likely, if he doesn’t do something.

He reluctantly gives up his residence inside Mike’s mouth, pressing his forehead to Mike’s temple while he catches his breath, hips still twitching.

“How are you doing?” Mike asks, voice off-roading over small boulders. His hand rests at the base of Bill’s neck, a comforting weight on the bump of his spine.

“I wanna touch you,” Bill says. “Your cock. Been th. Thinking about it.”

Mike exhales on a laugh, breath washing cool over Bill’s back, and then he clears his throat. “Yeah, you should do that if you want to.”

Bill shuffles backwards off of Mike’s lap, wanting to give himself a little space to work, and is faced with a logistical decision. Stand, where he’d have more control but have to bend down to do anything, or kneel, where he’d be running the clock against his nearly-middle-aged knees but would be up close and personal with Mike. It’s not a tough call. When he’s situated between Mike’s legs, which he wishes had been a more graceful process, he looks up to see that Mike’s eyes have gone impossibly darker.

There is a patch of hair just above the waistband of Mike’s pants that Bill feels very fondly towards. He drags his fingertips over it, watches the way Mike’s stomach twitches, before he unties the little bow of Mike’s pajamas. He pulls at the elastic, then remembers that there is a whole ass in the way, holding it up so that Bill cannot perform the very important duty of whatever it is he’s going to do to Mike’s dick when he finally sees it.

“Might need a little h—,” he says, shooting Mike a wry smile. “The pants.”

“Right,” Mike says, leaning back to wiggle them past his ass. Bill likes this angle, where Mike is both prone and looking down at him. He reaches up to drag the pants the rest of the way down, and feels the wild urge to sink his teeth into the inside of one of Mike’s thighs.

“How do you feel about biting?” he says.

“Please don’t bite my dick,” Mike replies quickly.

Bill laughs, sharp and surprised. “No, I-I’ve, I know how b-blowjobs work, I just. In general.”

“Am you gonna make me look like I got in a fight with a bobcat?” Mike asks, altogether too fond, running a finger over the shell of Bill’s ear.

“I have been known to use teeth,” Bill says carefully.

“Do what makes you happy, man,” Mike says, and then he says “Ng,” because Bill did bite the inside of his thigh. “Okay, definitely do that.”

“Boxers,” Bill realizes, with distaste. “Wh-who wears underwear under pajamas?”

Mike shrugs, making an expression that might have featured a blush, if the lighting in the room had been higher. “I was curating something. I wanted you to be comfortable.”

“Off,” Bill orders, and then they’re off, and there Mike is, heavy-looking, leaking a little. He would like fifteen minutes just to make observations and take notes, but there’s also a vein on the side of Mike’s cock that he wants to touch very badly, so he does. He’s not trying to—to  _ do _ anything, yet, so the low grumble from Mike’s chest surprises him. His eyes flick up. Mike’s body unwrapped like that, the length of his thighs moving uninterrupted into the curve of his ass and the little angle of his hipbones, up his sturdy ribs to his city-block-broad shoulders, and then the stubbly jaw he’s rubbing as if mesmerized on his own collarbone. Almost without deciding to, Bill wraps a hand around his cock, strokes once, twice, just to see what happens.

A little shudder runs through Mike’s torso, and the muscles in his hips flex slightly as he adjusts his seat on the bed, but he doesn’t break eye contact with Bill. Bill rests his arm on Mike’s thigh as his hand moves—nothing fancy: the angle is new even if the equipment isn’t. He lets his head loll onto his shoulder. “You’ll tell me if something g-goes horribly wrong,” he says.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mike breathes. “Do whatever you like doing to yourself. I’m kind of easy when it comes to you.”

Bill smiles lazily at him, then flicks his wrist upward, thumb over the head, and is somehow surprised to find wetness. He lifts his thumb up, observes it. He thinks about getting Mike in his mouth: he wants it, that vein pulsing against his tongue, jaw dropped open and drooling. Experimentally, he lifts his thumb to his mouth and sucks the precome off.

Mike makes a noise like a suspension bridge on a windy day, a groan that goes directly to Bill’s own cock, and curls in on himself. He rests his forehead in Bill’s hair.

“You good?” Bill aks.

“That was sexy, Bill,” Mike says. “It was very. It was.”

Bill smiles, runs his thumb over the head of Mike’s cock again just to see what noise he makes this close to Bill’s ear. It is high and quiet and not disappointing. “Can I blow you?” he asks, and Mike sits back up, hands flying to his face.

“Yes, Bill,” he says through his fingers. “Yeah, you can blow me.”

Bill starts with the vein, licking upwards like he’s trying to save an ice cream cone, only partially because the head is intimidating. Mike keens high in the back of his throat, so Bill does it along the underside, collecting the precome that had dripped down. There’s not a lot to the taste, but the warmth and the softness of Mike’s skin makes Bill squeeze his thighs together, willing himself a little further back from the edge. And then the head, which he swirls his tongue across first, but then finds he wants to cover the whole thing with his mouth, so he does.

He did enough research to know to grip the base with his hand, to keep his mouth to the top half. When he takes in as much as he can, just to feel the weight of it against his tongue, he hears Mike’s feet tap on the floor, and he tries to suppress a laugh. Something about the vibrations makes Mike twitch forward, shove a little further into Bill’s mouth, and Bill has to pull off, hand moving in his stead.

He looks up to see, first, that Mike’s mouth has fallen open, that he’s panting and willing his eyes to stay open. Then he sees Mike’s fists clenched in the duvet at his sides, skin strained pale over the knuckles, and he misses them suddenly. He reaches out to grab one with his free hand—Mike startles very slightly—untangle the fingers from the bedding, and place it across the back of his own neck. The weight of it feels right. Mike’s index finger runs back and forth over the short hair at the nape of Bill’s neck.

“Okay?” Bill says, his own voice sounding foreign and scratchy but satisfied.

Mike licks his lips. “You’re kind of a quick study, you know that?”

Bill smiles—he can’t not—and takes Mike back into his mouth—he can’t not.

Despite the physical dimensions, Bill thinks, this isn’t all that different from going down on, say, Audra: it’s about patience, about gently trying new things and noting the reaction, about finding the spot and the movement—say, a flick just there, the underside right where the foreskin draws back—that makes Mike’s hand twitch on the back of Bill’s neck. It’s about paying attention and breathing, inhaling deeply the salt-musk-body smell of Mike’s skin. Getting him to make a new noise, a guttural release deep in his throat. Cataloging it and making one quietly in return. Alternating strokes and suction and occasionally getting a little lost in sensation, humming thoughtfully and then releasing his soft palate in anticipation the moment Mike can’t stop himself from thrusting shallowly again. It’s a puzzle, but instead of trying to fit everything together, the reward is the man he’s a little in love with falling completely apart in his hands.

He’s not sure how long it takes before Mike is making a near-continuous stream of helpless little noises, one of his feet bouncing on the floor next to Bill’s knees. He shoves at Bill’s shoulders, and Bill pulls off readily: he does not have the hubris to believe he’s ready to swallow gracefully. “Hey, c’mere,” Mike says, but he doesn’t really need to. Bill is already crawling over him and laying him back along the bed.

Sucking cock for the first time, although a perfectly worthwhile experience on its own, had had the added benefit of distracting Bill from how achingly hard he himself was. It’s so bad that when Mike finally reaches down, strokes him once, Bill whines with overstimulation. Just on the bad side of too much. His tongue is still between Mike’s teeth.

“Hug oug,” Bill says. Mike lets go. “It’s good, it’s j-just—” he bites the inside of his top lip. “A lot.”

“Bedside table has lube. Might help,” Mike says, two fingers still hooked in the elastic of Bill’s briefs. He likes the idea that Mike doesn’t want to let him go. He ducks down for another kiss, hot and searching.

The only light in Mike’s room comes from streetlamps filtering in through the window, so Bill sort of scrabbles around in the drawer, bumping into one thing that feels like a flashlight and another that might be a candle. He hits something plastic-y and pulls it out without thinking.

Dildos still strike him as an objectively funny object. His girlfriends had mostly owned vibrators. He hasn’t really seen them outside of sex shops and gag gifts. This one is purple.

“Oh, my god,” Mike says.

Bill whaps it at his stomach, which makes Mike giggle. “You know my dick isn’t this big, right?”

Mike shuffles over on his back, pulling himself up just far enough to kiss Bill’s stomach, the crest of his hip. “Your dick is attached to you, which adds a lot of appeal.”

This time, Bill actually manages to snag the lube, thank God. Mike takes it from him, warms up a little in his hand. Bill lies down so they can curl into each other like matching parentheses. It’s better right away: at the first whip-glide of Mike’s hand over his cock, he exhales so hard he thinks he might crack a rib. It’s kind of vanilla, kind of an embarrassing way to be edging already, but he likes being able to see Mike’s face. Talk to him.

“How often do you do that?” he asks.

Mike smiles at him, reaches out his other hand to smooth across Bill’s waist. “What, fuck myself?”

“Hmmm,” Bill says. It’s difficult not to close his eyes. He reaches out for Mike, starts stroking him clumsily. “Yeah. Jesus, your hands are fucking b-big. Think about them all the time. Th-think about you touching me all the fucking time.”

“Yeah?” Mike asks, breathy.

“When was the last time?” There are little sparks playing at the perimeter of Bill’s vision, coaxed on by the clever movements of Mike’s hands. He rolls over slightly so he can bite Mike’s collarbone as he jacks him off. “Faster. Please.”

“A few. Few days ago,” Mike says, unraveling very quickly. “I think Sunday.”

Bill pictures it, Mike’s thighs falling open, or else pistoning, the muscles shifting, as he rides it: the way his head would fall back against the pillow, the way his chest would move. He forces himself to open his eyes to see the live-in-technicolor version, and it’s so much better. Mike’s tongue sweeps over his lip. He’s straining under Bill’s hands, breath labored. Bill’s cock is more trapped against his thigh than anything, but neither of them mind: Bill grinds into it, winding his ankle under Mike’s calf for better leverage. Mike leans down to suck a hot-wet mark into the side of his neck. That’s going to be it for him, he can tell.

“Did you think about me?” Bill asks, too close to the edge to be self-conscious.

“Yeah,” Mike breathes. “God, you were so good.”

The heat of it, the sweat sticking between them, Mike’s voice rumbling in his ear: Bill half-screams as he comes, burying the noise in the meat of Mike’s shoulder. As he rises back up to the surface, he feels Mike still hard in his hand, and that seems wrong, an embarrassing oversight.

“Mike,” he says. “I wanna see you come so bad—” and he does, toes curling against Bill’s other leg, spackling his own stomach in white, a bitten-off high whine behind his teeth.

_ “Shit,” _ Bill says. “Shit, shit.”

Mike clears his throat. “Yeah. Jesus.”

Bill stamps Mike’s shoulder with another kiss before he finally lets him up for a washcloth. “Come back soon,” he says as he watches Mike’s ass disappear into the bathroom. “‘M not sleeping alone.”

“I wouldn’t let you,” Mike calls back, and Bill, already half-asleep, holds his arms in the air happily in anticipation of the return.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s probably the second body in his bed that wakes Mike up, to be honest: the way Bill’s weight coaxes the mattress down, the way his calf is flung over into Mike’s space, the way he radiates warmth like an idling car. He looks permanent when he sleeps. Like a statue carved to recline on a garden bench. At this hour, his bedroom is navy-blue and stoic and sort of removed, like a movie set where Mike is supposed to reenact his own life.

He unsticks his face from the pillow, trying to gauge how long it will take him to fall back asleep, shifting his jaw gingerly. He wasn’t grinding his teeth, it seems. Too relaxed.

It’s not quite one A.M.—they’d fallen asleep early by Mike’s standards. He takes stock of his usual witching hour worries. The alarms are set. He has plenty of time to get the rest of a good night’s sleep. Nothing at work, with his parents, with his friends has any more urgency than usual. In theory, he should be able to get back to sleep quickly.

Except for Bill.

Nobody else has slept in Mike’s bed since the middle of summer—the last was Alex, nothing special, not like this. Because it is the dead of night and the ambient light looks like what filters through thick aquarium glass, Mike thinks that probably he is awake because his body registers not-loneliness as a special occasion. He isn’t an isolated person, but he has felt somewhat lonely for the majority of his adult life. He doesn’t now.

Surely he’s allowed to watch Bill sleep. Not three hours ago he had tipped Bill into orgasm by describing his own fantasies of getting fucked, so the intimacy train has most likely left the station. Mike settles down into his pillows and counts little twitches as they play through Bill’s fine reddish eyebrows, looks at the silver hair just starting to frame his face. When Bill starts to stir into wakefulness, Mike thinks he should probably play dead so they can both get back to sleep as soon as possible.

He doesn’t.

Bill doesn’t so much say hello as he makes a little noise, _m’_ s and _h’_ s, when his eyes open and he sees Mike looking back. “Hrmp,” Mike replies in solidarity, before a stubborn laugh starts knocking in his chest.

“Whas’ so funny,” Bill says, half his eyelashes folded down.

“Nothing,” Mike says, but he finally breaks and smiles when Bill pouts at him, lower lip pushing the upper into a charming little bow.

“Like tha’,” Bill says.

“What?” Mike whispers, listening to the sweep of his leg across the sheets as he taps Bill’s shinbone with his big toe.

Bill reaches across clumsily and draws his pointer finger lightly across Mike’s mouth—lips, teeth. “Your smile.”

And he always thinks Bill is charming, but that’s almost too much, with the sleep hair and the pillow mark across his right eye and the soft hand moving up to cup his cheek. He feels the little electric current that he thought for a while he’d lost to age: nervous eagerness that radiates from his stomach. A crush. Butterflies, like he’s sneaking a Valentine into Bill’s locker.

Bill rolls closer, one hand on Mike’s waist, to collect a lingering kiss. There’s a dreamlike feeling to it, how perfectly warm Bill is, the way their lips click as they pull apart in the silence, then the breath from both of them as they lean back in, open-mouthed this time, deep.

It’s not that Mike stopped thinking about sex with Bill, exactly. That was close to the first thing he remembered upon waking up. He’d been pink in the face when he came. He had made little thoughtful sounds as he knelt between Mike’s legs. But now, as Mike throws an arm around his waist and hums his approval, chasing the stale taste of sleep from the corners of Bill’s mouth, his cock feels sensitive against his thigh. He’s not tired.

But it’s late and Mike knows, objectively if not subjectively, that the rest of the world has not disappeared, so he tries to tell himself to settle. Kisses Bill slow and deep and careful, setting a pace that might fall naturally into rest. Tidal. 

Bill’s other hand roams drowsily over the rest of his Mike’s torso, hipbone to collarbone, sending little shudders up next to his spine. Mike shifts involuntarily, hips rolling up as he settles further into the pillows; Bill laughs gently and their teeth click together. After either two minutes or twenty years, Bill circles a teasing fingertip over Mike’s nipple.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“Okay,” Bill replies, lips hovering a hairsbreadth away, and it’s so tempting, but—but—

“We should get some sleep,” Mike says. Bill huffs and sags back onto his elbow, bemused and shining. Mike misses the weight on his chest.

“That’s probably s-smart,” Bill agrees, but he doesn’t look excited about it.

“Okay,” Mike says. “So.”

He kisses Bill again, a slow, chaste good night, and then turns over onto his other side.

“Good night, Mike,” Bill whispers.

Mike huffs, reaches back. He hits Bill’s stomach, sternum, hipbone before he gets a hold of his arm and pulls it over his own waist.

“Oh, I see,” Bill mumbles, settling against his back. “You wanna blanket, not a boyfriend.”

“Why not go for the best of both?” Mike murmurs back, eyes closed, head burrowed into the pillow. He can feel Bill’s smile against the skin between his shoulderblades

Ten seconds pass. Then another ten seconds. Mike thinks about relaxing his toes, then his feet, then his ankles, then gets bored, loses track, and starts over. If he shifts just so, he thinks he can feel that Bill is sporting a half-chub. He can feel the inside of Bill’s elbow over his ribs, the dampness of breathing against his back. He restarts the body scan.

“Your h-heart is beating really fast,” Bill whispers into the back of his neck.

Little shit.

“Your dick is hard,” Mike whispers back.

Bill laughs, and the transition from a whisper to a quiet vocalization makes Mike’s stomach flip over youthfully. “Well, that’s all yours if you want it. I could take over for the p-purple people eater.”

Mike hides his smile in his wrist. “We can’t. It’s like, one in the morning. That’d be stupid.”

Bill kisses the nape of his neck, smacking. “You’re so right.” He wiggles even closer, plastering himself against Mike’s back, cock prodding gently at Mike’s tailbone.

“Hussy,” Mike says.

Bill just hums.

Mike presses back, ass flush with Bill’s groin, and then stretches forward, testing the waters of Bill’s interest in his back muscles. He reaches down to grab one of Bill’s legs by the knee and pull it over his hips. “Goodnight, Bill,” he says.

Bill gasps. “Minx!”

Mike grinds back once more.

Bill’s breath pauses in his chest, like he’s going to say something, and Mike squeezes the grip he still has on Bill’s knee.

“Hey Mike,” he says cautiously.

“Hey, Bill,” Mike replies, turning enough that he can see the blurry edge of Bill’s face: most of an eye, the cheekbone, the side of his triangular little nose.

The eye twinkles at him. “Do you want to do something stupid?”

The logic of their relationship, which Mike has to remind himself of fairly often, says that a blow job, two half-handjobs, and a few hours of spooning is a perfectly reasonable level of sexual activity for your first night with the boyfriend who’s never been with another man. A person more capable of moderation might decide that getting fucked into the mattress can wait; there’s no rush, there’s work tomorrow. The dangerous thing about Bill is that he makes time seem less important than closeness.

Mike turns in his arms, surrendering to the orchestra-soundtrack over-the-top instincts that Bill pulls out of him more than anyone else he’s met, and pins him to the bed. Their hips slot together easily. Bill’s breath comes in little huffs when Mike starts mouthing at the side of his neck, looking for that spot from earlier, the thin skin that pulls fitful little noises from Bill’s throat. He had chosen not to leave a mark there before. He feels less responsible now.

Sleep made them both pliable. Mike relaxes completely, draped over Bill, pressing his lips to whatever skin he can find with his eyes closed, and Bill’s like putty underneath him, head moving to provide better access for Mike’s exploration. The heels of his hands press into Mike’s waist, fingertips twitching where they curve over his back, like he doesn’t completely know what to do with himself.

Mike’s skin remembers how it felt to have Bill grab his ass, desperate, to pull them closer together. The way his fingers had pressed into the muscle: fucking perfect, not enough. “Hey, you,” he says, just to hear Bill swallow, raspy, before he says “can I help you?”

Mike reaches back for Bill’s hand, moves it south a few inches. “Why, yes, you can.”

He can practically hear the tinny takeoff noise as Bill lights up like an emergency flare.

The midnight lethargy sloughs off suddenly, like snow from the sheer side of a mountain. There is an avalanche of hands, energy: Bill pulling Mike close, writhing up against him, biting at his lips and jaw and shoulder. Mike pushes down a moan when Bill’s fingers ghost over and down. They trace the lines of his ass, graze his balls; Mike hitches up a knee to give him better access. He sucks on Bill’s tongue in encouragement.

When the pad of Bill’s index finger glides over his hole, they separate with a puh, and Bill tucks his head into Mike’s neck, sucking on the curve where it turns into shoulder. “Can I b- Can I-,” he says when his hand has returned to the neutral territory of an asscheek. “I wanna fuck you.”

Mike knew that. It still makes him shudder.

“Please,” he says, pressing his tongue to the fresh bruise under Bill’s jaw.

Bill sucks in a breath and presses a finger to his rim again. It’s like—and he suspects Bill feels it too—like they’re already halfway down the hill, arms out to absorb impact but not to slow momentum. “You want to?”

“Starving for it,” Mike says. Honestly.

Despite his bravado, Bill is still new at this, still wet behind the ears, and so Mike offers to show him. He grabs the lube from where it had fallen to the floor, settles back against the pillows. Bill kneels between his legs again, but this time, he’s gazing down, and Mike feels a thrill roll through his body, throwing his legs over Bill’s parted thighs. Splaying open, propped up. “All right?” he asks, and Bill nods without breaking eye contact. “Can you see?”

Mouth parted, Bill watches the progress of Mike’s slicked-up fingers as they travel down, giving his cock one loose, lazy stroke, tracing over his hole. He pushes the tip of his index finger into the muscle, just so Bill can see him part, so he can watch Bill’s tongue dip out to wet the center of his lip. “Don’t worry about using too much lube,” Mike says, hand moving just enough to push the finger a half-centimeter deeper, then retreat. “You messed up my sheets earlier anyway.”

“Worth it,” Bill says, palm rubbing over the head of his cock and down his shaft.

“Agreed,” Mike replies, and pushes his finger in up to the knuckle. It hasn’t been that long: he’d ridden his own hand almost to completion just a few nights ago, imagining the body pressed up behind him, the hands moving over his stomach. Still, with Bill looking down at him like he’s some kind of miracle, it’s easier to open himself than he expects, as if Bill’s melting him like butter. He pumps his finger once, rotates it against his rim. Bill swallows.

“What does it feel like?” Bill asks, hoarse.

Mike teases two fingers at his entrance, presses the tips in next to each other, breathes through the stretch and release. “Good,” he says. “Tight.”

“Can I—“ Bill’s hand makes an aborted movement, away from his cock.

Mike nods.

Rather than wait for Mike to take his fingers out, Bill rubs a dollop of lube over his hand and presses his index finger against Mike’s already-stretched rim, pushing them in together. Mike moans at the sudden intrusion, head slamming back against the pillows, and Bill freezes.

“Just go slow,” Mike says, twisting his wrist, scissoring his own fingers to find space for Bill. “But don’t stop.”

Bill complies. The blunt stretch of another finger moving slowly, slowly in makes Mike feel almost like screaming. It’s hot and close and aching and his hips roll up against both of their hands. He knows Bill thrusts a few times as he travels in, coaxing, but he’s busy watching the way Bill’s cock twitches, watching the strain of the muscle at his inner thigh.

Mike’s head lolls back onto the pillow and he waits, impatiently, to feel Bill’s knuckles against his entrance. “Fucking shit,” Bill says when he’s all the way in. “If you c-could see this. You’re beautiful.”

One inhale, one exhale, unclenching around their joined fingers. “All right,” Mike says. “Real sweet talker now that—“ he pistons his fingers once— “I’m putting out.”

Bill’s eyes flick up to Mike’s face and he smiles in a bright, unselfconscious way that produces the unique sensation of a whirlpool in Mike’s chest. His heart spirals underwater with little protest. Bill picks up Mike’s free hand and kisses the center of his palm.

Hot as it is to feel them both in there, shifting together, it’s not the most coordinated approach, so Bill pours another small lake of lube into his hand and goes in solo. Three fingers, in and out, steadily. “F-feedback?”

Mike swivels his hips, chasing the pressure. “You can, uh,” he says as Bill reaches out to tweak a nipple. “You can curl your fingers. Up.”

“El Dorado,” Bill says, which makes him laugh, but then he does it. Not quite the right spot, but close, and Mike swallows around a whine. “You’ll tell me if—“

“You’ll know,” Mike breathes.

Another try, two, Bill’s fingers pressing down against Mike’s rim, and then a jolt like stadium lights flaring. Mike’s clean hand flies up to his mouth, pressing down a groan that would be too loud in the silence, too disruptive. Bill’s fingers curl again, a soft stroke, more direct this time, and even the muffled sound against Mike’s palm is embarrassingly needy.

When he looks up to check on Bill, his eyes are dark, chest moving. There’s a little twitch in his upper arm when his fingers tense up. Mike very suddenly wants to suck his cock until he screams. His hand flies out, spit-sticky, to grab Bill’s wrist where it flexes busily between his legs.

Bill looks up at him, a silent question.

“Please,” Mike says. “I’m good. I want you.”

There are condoms on the nightstand, and Mike’s thighs push up against his sides when Bill leans over to grab one. He rocks into the extra stretch. When Bill rolls the condom over himself, rubs himself slick, and asks, “How do you w—“ Mike doesn’t think for more than a second.

“Like this,” he says, tugging on Bill’s arms to pull him over.

They spend another minute, or another ten, just pressed together again as Bill kisses him, open-mouthed and sloppy. Mike hooks his ankles together behind Bill’s ass, squeezing his legs around his trunk like a python. Bill’s cock slips wet and teasing against his hole.

“Okay,” Mike says. “Let me—”

He reaches up for a pillow to put under his hips. He lines them up, one hand on Bill’s cock and the other on his hipbone, and pulls him in.

The night feels different, sticky, the pull of it like soft-ball sugar bubbling hot in the bottom of the pan. There isn’t room to breathe and he doesn’t want to. Everything is blue: light limning Bill’s face, sound of tree branches against window, ceiling so far away it might be sky, and then the red stretch-heat of Bill pushing into him endlessly, stubborn and warm. It’s a different world between their bodies, the humidity as they both exhale inwards, looking down where they meet.

Mike watches Bill’s hips press against him, bottomed out, and finds enough air somewhere in his body to moan quietly about it. Bill shudders closer, twitching under the onslaught of sensation. Mike pets the back of his neck. They kiss with a sweetness that surprises him.

“Mike?” Bill says, dropping his head to Mike’s shoulder.

“Uh-huh?”

_ “Fuck.” _

When he moves, it’s almost nothing, except for that it’s not. Just the smallest movement back and then forward, a single centimeter—if that—that makes Mike feel as if he’s tied to the earth by a thread. “You,” he says, looping his arms around Bill’s shoulders, kissing the side of his face. “You are perfect.”

The next few movements are small, too, an archer drawing back slightly, testing the string. Then Bill grips the edge of the mattress—Mike can feel the pillows moving under his head—pulls out swift and smooth, almost to the tip, and thrusts back in, punching a high-pitched  _ unh _ out of Mike.

He finds the rhythm in it after a few tries—slipping out once, propping himself higher on his hands, becoming sidetracked by the way Mike’s nipples tighten under his attention—and it’s honey-sweet when he does. Coats the throat. Little stars bursting around him when he skims against Mike’s prostate. Mike watches his eyes fall closed, breathing become burdened and raspy. The sinews of his shoulder shift as he puts a hand behind Mike’s knee for leverage.

Mike levels off, enjoying the closeness and the slow glowing embers of arousal. He’s in no hurry. He smooths both hands over Bill’s sides and then digs his nails in to see what will happen, and Bill exhales shakily. He clenches around Bill’s cock and is rewarded with a groan. It’s not hard to tell when Bill starts to lose it. His hips stutter, his stomach muscles tighten. Mike locks his ankles again, helping him rebound at the outside end of a stroke, pushing up to meet him. Come on, he thinks. You looked so pretty last time. Falling apart for me.

He frames Bill’s face with his hands—clean, dirty, it doesn’t seem to matter too much anymore; they’ll both need showers—and pulls him down for a kiss. Definitely dirty. He swipes his tongue over the ridges of Bill’s palate, presses his nose into Bill’s cheek. Enjoys the way his shoulders jolt back into the headboard as Bill pushes. “C’mon, baby,” he says. “Give it to me. You’re doing so well.”

Dirty talk with a new person is always a mixed bag. Guesses that blend together their embarrassment and yours, things that work too well and things that miss the mark by a mile. Mike is trying to speak from the heart, sort of, but he’s guessing with the praise thing and the baby. Still, he’s surprised when Bill stops moving altogether.

“Mmh,” Bill says, unhelpfully. “Mm.”

“What’s up?” Mike asks, shifting his hips around, trying to gauge the odds that Bill just had an incredibly boring orgasm. 

“What do you like?” Bill blurts, pulling back, lips spit-shiny.

Mike reaches up to touch one, finger plucking it down and releasing. They’re red. Swollen. He rolls up against Bill, chasing the steady slide against his rim. “This. You. Anything,” he says.

“Shit,” Bill says, scrunching his eyes shut even as his hips grind forward. “I mean, i-is there anything you—I’m not going to last v-very long.”

“That’s fine with me, handsome,” Mike says petting the side of his neck. “It’s not a contest.”

“H—yeah, I figured,” Bill says, ducking his head sweetly to kiss the inside corner of Mike’s knee. “B-but I want to see you.”

“Hm,” Mike says, closing his eyes. “I’d be a little offended if you weren’t looking.”

“No, I want to—I want to  _ feel _ it,” Bill says, something scraping in his voice like a match against a matchbox. There’s a wet heat against Mike’s throat—Bill’s mouth, his tongue flicking against the skin. A flash of desire passes across and down his chest.

“You want to be inside me?” Mike says, and he can hear all of Bill’s breath whoosh out of him at once. “You want to feel me around you when I come?”

Mike blinks away the red flares left from his eyelids and watches as Bill’s hand, next to Mike’s ribcage, makes a fierce and sudden fist, pulling up the sheets between his knuckles. “Yeah,” Bill breathes.

He looks a little more nervous, eyes wide and brow tense, as he pulls out of Mike and sits back on his heels, watching Mike stroke himself a few times. He goes easily when Mike tells him to switch spots, lay back against the pillows. He grips the base of his cock and flinches when Mike straddles his hips.

“You ready to be used for your dick?” Mike teases, and Bill smiles but his eyes don’t lose that tightness.

Mike has the sudden instinct to put a weighted blanket on him like he’s a horse. He reaches out for the bottle, thinking.

“You know, back in college, I used to have this trick—” he pauses to reach behind himself with a handful of lube and stroke Bill’s cock once, twice. “I could go from my hands and knees to missionary without the guy falling out.”

“No way,” Bill says with a little laugh, eyebrows relaxing. He twitches when Mike runs his thumbnail, gentle as you like, across Bill’s slit.

“Oh yeah,” Mike replies, fitting his fingers into the topography of Bill’s ribs. He lifts up, taps the head of Bill’s cock against his hole. “Still couldn’t tell you how. I was more flexible then. I think my lack of anatomical knowledge kind of helped.”

Once more unto the breach. He bends down to kiss Bill gently, one elbow planted in the pillows next to Bill’s head as he licks the soft underside of his upper lip. “Ready?” he says, practically a whisper.

A nod, emphatic. Red-silver hair shifting against the white pillows.

Mike knows Bill watches him. It’s hard not to: bright blue eyes like static cling on his skin. And he always likes it. He likes knowing that he can catch him at it, like they’re kids, make his eyes flick away and color appear high on his cheeks. He likes looking right back across a crowded room or a restaurant table, giving as good as he gets. He likes pinning Bill’s neon gaze over a gearshift or a couch, waiting to be kissed, until Bill scrambles up to him and plucks the want out of his mouth like a cherry stem. As a rule, Mike’s life is ordinary. Safe. Built to last, like the old farm house. Straight hallways. Doors leading to rooms. He likes being made enigmatic by the way Bill tries to puzzle him out.

Mike straightens up and sinks down in one motion, relaxing, accommodating. He watches back.

There is something slow and vicious about this look, the looking back: it travels through him and refuses to crescendo. He feels it up along his neck and up behind his ears. Bill, flushed and pretty underneath him, swallows as Mike bottoms out. In the dark cerulean quiet they breathe in unison.

He rocks gently, trying to stay controlled, feeling the nudge of the head of his cock deeper. The urgency that disappeared sometime after Bill first split him open has come back. Mike’s body sings with the need to take, to ride him until the heat building in his stomach roars up and out. He holds it off a few seconds—lifts up, leveraging on his hands against Bill’s chest, then sinks back down slowly just to watch Bill go pinker.

Then he locks eyes with Bill as he leans back, one hand on Bill’s shin, and starts to move. As selfish as possible, quick knife-edge thrusts that drag the head of Bill’s cock just right inside of him, just there, over and over, feeling his own cock slap Bill’s stomach as he surges down against him. He’s embarrassed, again, at how quickly his vocal cords have a life of their own. He presses his lips together against the noise.

“Fuck, Mike,” Bill breathes, trying his level best to meet the pace Mike sets, but mostly looking at him in awe. Hands resting on the angle where thigh meets torso. It’s sort of a show, Mike knows. He snaps his hips forward once more, keeping his eyes on Bill’s so that he can’t possibly miss the way Mike’s roll shut when the stroke glides just right.

“Fuck,” and this time Bill finds it, slamming up in perfect time, and when Mike wipes his eyes they come away wet. He leans back further, rolls into it harder, and has to bite his knuckles against a shout.

“Don’t,” Bill says, a stone slingshotted into the silence, and Mike looks down at him again. His eyes are bleary, but certain; he props himself up on an elbow. “Don’t cover it.”

Mike’s hand drops. This time, when he bounces, the little moan escapes unencumbered.

“Yeah,” Bill says, gravelly. “T-tell me how it feels.”

Mike grinds his hips in a slow circle, lifts up carefully, feels the drag of Bill’s cock on the way down, and lets his eyes flutter shut as he moans. Long. Loud. Beatific. Bill’s hands grip his hips vice-like, desperate. It gets easier on the second pass, the third. At first just noise, overwhelmed and open and sloppy, and then as Bill starts to meet him again, harder and faster: “Shit. Shit, Bill, you feel—you make me—oh my god,” and Bill is sitting up, suddenly, scrabbling at Mike’s ass and chest and arms. Mike bends to kiss him, cupping his face like catching river water, teeth clacking, drinking the way Bill whines into his mouth. He’s moving like hell, hips to shoulders, a writhing mess, and then Mike feels the blunt tightness of Bill biting his collarbone as he comes deep inside him.

“Sorry, I,” Bill starts, then thinks better of it, taking a hold of Mike’s leaking cock and pulling, swiping the slick down the shaft, licking Mike’s neck under his ear. He thrusts up a last few times, surging into the spot Mike mapped for him earlier, and Mike feels it crest like a wave even before Bill reaches around to press a finger to Mike’s sloppy, oversensitive rim.

Mike muffles his cry in Bill’s hair and comes with a feeling like thunder under his ribs, rocking helplessly against Bill’s softening cock.

There is come on Bill’s chin, when he finally noses up for a kiss. Barely any, but it makes them both laugh. The bed is a mess, little damp patches everywhere, but Mike flops down face-first anyway. He needs to sleep for a day. For a week.

“Did—” Bill huffs, sprawled on his back next to Mike. “If—if it’s always like that, I’m going to quit my job.”

Mike hums, eyes closed, pleased at the  _ always. _ “It won’t be,” he mumbles. “I won’t always do all of the work.”

“Ha-ha,” Bill says. The bed dips as he leans closer, kisses Mike’s chin and then lips, a little ridge of bedsheet caught between them. “I have years of experience to m-make up for.”

Mike shuffles forward to touch their foreheads together, too hot to be any closer, too enamored to be any farther away. “We got nothing but time.”


End file.
